Double check your supermarket bill

Several supermarkets that display discounted prices on certain products in their promotional flyers fail to mark the same price on the bill. Supermarkets constantly make changes to the promotional offers on their products during the month of Ramadan, which calls for greater attentiveness on the part of customers.
Customers who do not double-check their bills before leaving the supermarket might find themselves being cheated.
“You just can’t always trust the promotional flyers,” says Maha Ghassan, a regular customer at one of the local superstores. “Sometimes, the products listed in the flyer aren’t on sale at all. Many times, I find myself paying the original price of the product, even though it is listed as discounted. I have been keeping track of some of the prices of the usual items I buy from supermarkets. They are not always put on discount even though they appear to be discounted on the promotional flyer.”
Ghassan says that she has been misled into paying the original price on several occasions although they were earmarked on the promotional flyers.
“I recently went through a bill after finishing shopping and paying for my groceries at the supermarket counter,” says Ghassan. “I found that two of the products I had purchased were not listed according to the discounted price on the flyer and that they registered the original price on my receipt. I went back to the cashier to clarify the matter. He apologized and said it was a problem with their program and that the discounted prices were not saved.”
Ghassan says that while discussing the matter with a couple of her friends, she found that she wasn’t the only one who has had such an experience. “It is just up to us shoppers to double check our bills at the counter before leaving the supermarket.”
Errors at the supermarket counter happen on a regular basis at several supermarkets, say shoppers. It is either the absence of price tags on certain products, a problem with the pricing program or a printing mistake on the promotional flyer that leads shoppers to lose extra bucks.
According to Abu Malek, customers must be vigilant and make it a habit of checking the prices of grocery items.
“I download promotional flyers from all supermarkets and compare the prices before I go shopping,” says Abu Malek. “I then choose the supermarket with the most reasonable prices to purchase from. I have been in situations where I paid the original price for a discounted product because the original price was printed on my bill and I was unaware of it. This has happened to me on several occasions. Now, I always make sure to double check.”
“I’m not denying that we have problems with our pricing program, but this does not happen regularly,” says Mohamed Raza, a sales manager at a reputed supermarket in Jeddah. “It happens when the discounted price is not saved in the program. In these instances, we apologize profusely to the customer. Apart from these sporadic incidents, we always provide our clients with the best services we can.”